Long Time, No C

Tempus fugit.  I began writing this post in 2013 thinking I'd get the old blog started up again since my last post in 2011.  Ain't good intentions wonderous?  I made another feeble attempt to blog in 2015 with the same vacuous result.  It's now a good way into 2017 and I'm trying again.

Many things have changed since I last put figurative pen to digital paper here.  My writing tool of choice for the moment is my trusty iPad with its touch screen, a vast improvement over the old, huge Microsoft PC that took forever to boot up and required a full time staff person to install security patches.  Added benefit: I can iPad anywhere I please.  My phone habits morphed from landline to flip phone to smart phone.  I can be in touch with the world instantly, constantly.  My personal experience suggests that's not necessarily a good thing, especially these days when the world is coming at you instantly, constantly, and most of that is unjuried drivel.  YMMV.

I retired from the library world to the vineyard in 2015.  What's that old saw-- my husband's got twice the wife and half the income?  That was a momentous change.  I no longer had to be at a specific place at a specific time doing a specific job anymore.  My days are almost completely ruled now by the vagaries of nature and the weather, and neither of those cares much about schedules.  My work is a good deal more solitary as well, just me and the vines, or mower, or bottles, or paperwork.  I do miss my library family, but I did develop a family of sorts made up of bluebirds, mockingbirds, cardinals, barn swallows, hawks, rabbits, coyotes, badgers, and other varmints du jour.  I experience gorgeous and unusual things here that no one sitting behind a desk ever will.

The other change that has sorta oozed into my life is the expected but unwelcome number of physical complaints that happen as a person advances in life experience.  The eyes aren't as good as they used to be, one knuckle forecasts rain, the back complains when it's worked too hard.  I still work hard, just not as hard and as long as I used to.  I still carry 40 pound cases of wine up 13 steps from the cellar to stock the tasting room, but my knees complain now.  There's a positive to this: I'm always thinking of ways to improve the workflow and reduce the effort involved.  I've actually implemented some of those ideas, but there's always more to be done.

Time for me to get going.  The grass has dried and mowing awaits.  It's that schedule thing.  I may be back here soon, or it may be another 6 years before I post again.  Who knows?

cg

Dude, where's my blog post?

Facebook informed me today that my Fermented Librarian blog posts will no longer be automatically imported to my Facebook notes. Sure, I can post a link to my blog on my FB wall, but having my blatherings automatically imported to FB was far easier and user friendly. Je ne comprends pas!

In honor of the fact that it's cool and very windy today, I'm (re)watching A Year in Provence on DVD (book by Peter Mayle). John Thaw and Lindsay Duncan star as the Mayles, retired from Brit employment and living an idyllic existence in a 200 year old farmhouse in the Provence region of France. Or so they thought. In the first episode, le Mistral, a frigid cold blast from Siberia, blows in and freezes the plumbing solid (plomberie de Parisienne-- this is an insult). I have learned a fair amount of French from watching over the years, but mostly I just really enjoy the culture whiplash. No, I have never tried the recipe for Fox casserole, nor am I ever likely to try it.

We named one of our wines after a recurring character-- Charlemagne, the noisy rooster. Back in our chicken days, we had one just like him. Except our Charlemagne went beyond just being noisy; he was older and had long spurs, and he started wearing out our hens, then moved on to attacking the farm cats. The day he attacked me was the day he was "invited" to Sunday dinner. He was dispatched with a .22 (we couldn't catch him), plucked, cleaned and frozen. Even so, Charlemagne had the final revenge. Greg accidentally used the rooster to make fried chicken for me one night. It looked and smelled wonderful, but old roosters are (quelle surprise) very, very tough and only suitable for long-simmered chicken and noodles. The meat would not separate from the bones at all! We ate the mashed potatoes and gravy and gave the chicken to the farm cats, who happily chewed on it for days.

Other things I've learned from A Year in Provence: how to hunt truffles with a pig; how to play petanque; how to avoid hail during grape harvest; and how to excuse missing a deadline by using "normalement": I expect to post a new blog post each week, normalement.  :)

Paved with good intentions

It's been almost a year to the day since my last post. My intention was to post more frequently about winery happenings, as there are many of them, but time has a habit of passing by while we're not paying attention, and so here it is one year later and I'm beginning again.

Probably the Thing of Greatest Import for the winery this year was our showing in the 2011 Indy International Wine Competition in August. We entered only one wine, our 2005 Norton. It is 100% Norton, from our own vineyard, and it slept in an American Oak barrel for 42 months prior to bottling in February 2011. We thought it was good, but it was nice to learn others thought so-- It garnered a Gold medal and Best of Class in the Norton category. We do have this wonderful wine for sale at Davenport Winery; sorry, no tastes or discounts on this one.

The 7th Annual Kaw Valley Farm Tour brought lots of new visitors to our winery for wagon rides through the vineyard, tours of the processing area and wine tasting. This year there were wine bus tours both days, and a chef from the Merc who prepared a wonderful warm roasted sweet potato/apple salad with maple syrup/balsamic vinaigrette, free samples for all! Farm Tour participants were able to choose from among 24 different farms this year, from the small boutique to the very large row crop operation. What a great opportunity!

Currently we're in between seasons. Harvest is over. This year's fermentations are almost done. We're mounding up dirt over the grafts on the vinifera vines to protect them from winter kill. Sometime in December, the pruning party will begin. Working the wine, bottling, and welcoming people to the tasting room goes on all year. Never a dull moment in the Davenport vineyard-- put on your hip waders and keep up with us on Facebook and Twitter or right here on FL.

...and now for something completely different!

Fermented Librarian was created to post comments about my experiences with 23 Things Kansas-- a statewide effort to introduce library types to new technology. It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot of new things, but it's time to repurpose FL to blog about something else near and dear to my heart: Davenport Vineyard and Winery, created, owned and operated since 1997 by me and my vintage spouse. I'll still use Twitter for quickie winery updates, and Facebook for similar and/or more lengthy comments, and FL will allow me to get wordier (is that even a word?).

So. Grape harvest (vendange if you're in France) finished up about 2 weeks ago. Time to sit back and relax, oui? Mais non! Take a breath, and begin again. Do a final mowing for the season. Hill up dirt around the trunks of the grafted French grape varieties so the winter won't kill them. Sharpen up pruning equipment and wait for the first hard freeze. When we're certain the vines are asleep for the winter, pruning begins and carries on through April/May. Cellar work is ongoing. Most fermentations are complete; the juvenile wines will be left to settle in stainless steel tanks. They'll be racked (pumped) off the lees (dead yeast) and transfered to other tanks, or to oak barrels if they are destined to become oak aged dry reds. The wines are worked year round, clarified and bottled as they reach their individual maturation points. Some of this is scientific and controlled, but a lot of it is up to Mother Nature. We try not to tick her off.

23 Things, Week 16 Wrap-Up (sniff)

...and 23 Things Kansas rides off into the sunset. Not hardly. I participated in the April 28 wrap up webinar and now am writing this last post to describe my experience. I've invested a lot of time and effort in this project, and it's been fun and intellectually profitable. I'll make a stab at 23 things I've learned (in no particular order): 1. Be patient when learning about new technology. 2. Be fearless when learning about new technology. 3. Be forgiving when learning about new technology. 4. Don't let your laptop battery run out of juice when you're almost finished with a project. 5. There are lots of colleagues who are willing to help. 6. Don't be afraid to ask for help. 7. I love Animoto. 8. I like Facebook a lot more than I thought I would. 8. Screencasting will be a great teaching tool for us. 9. IM can be useful, but I'm not quite ready to use it yet. 10. Twitter is great for quick and dirty marketing. 11. Sony digital cameras have proprietary video file formats (and re-read #4). 12. I already do a lot of computing in the clouds and it doesn't scare me. 13. I'm going to be spending a lot of time on Shelfari cataloging my personal wine library. 14. I can't keep up with my Google Reader RSS feeds. 15. I just love "attending" webinars. 16. It's not who you know, but how you contact them. 17. Bob Dylan is right (the times, they are a changin'). 18. Hang on tight. 19. A broken wiki can be fixed. 20. But a broken flash drive generally can't be. 21. We have started using Google docs at work for interdepartmental communication. 22. I'm sorry it's the end of 23 Things. 23. The 23 Things mentors were AWESOME! Thanks, guys.

23 Things, Week 15

I have a small amount of experience using wikis. My department uses a PBWorks wiki to document departmental procedures and record useful links to work related sources, but it's absolutely bare bones. For the first part of this assignment, I ventured into Wikipedia, created an account, and edited the Eudora, Kansas page by adding a link to the Eudora Public Library under the "External Links" section. I chose Wikipedia because the 23 Things blurb said you didn't need an account to edit pages, but I was not able to add that link until I had created one.

I just completed part two by creating and linking my page on the 23 Things Kansas wiki. I also took a few moments to read other participants' pages to see what others had enjoyed most about 23 Things. What a fun bunch of folks we are!

23 Things, Week 14

Coming down the home stretch. Shelfari is my choice for sharing my bibliophile self. It seemed really easy to use, plays well with Blogger, and with Amazon's backing, will have tons of cover art to pretty up my shelf. I've found a glitch or two that I need to solve-- "From Vines to Wines" actually shows that I have 2 editions. I only have one, but wanted to use the cover art from another ed. and now Shelfari thinks I have 2. For my copy of "The Grape in Kansas" (1901), I made my own record for it because I couldn't find that edition on Shelfari. I hope to go back and fill in a little more information about it later on and add scanned cover art, but it's fine for now. I have TONS more books to add and am looking forward to doing so. I've added a Shelfari profile photo and put a widget on my blog. Here's my official Shelfari page: http://www.shelfari.com/charleeg

23 Things, Week 13

I had a great time with this assignment! My subject is one of my favorite "people" and I wanted to illustrate her favorite leisure activity. I used Animoto to create this slide show. It was extremely easy to use and produces some very cool effects. I did use Adobe Photoshop Elements to reduce the size of the images to the 1024 x 768 size recommended, but otherwise it was easy easy easy, like falling off a log easy. Hope you have as much fun watching as I did making!

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

23 Things, Week 12

This screencasting assignment took me almost as long to complete as the Week 10 video project and was almost as nerve-wracking. Writing the screencast script was a lot like doing technical writing-- clarity, brevity, de-jargoning, and not assuming the viewer has any existing knowledge about the topic are all important. My script kept taking tangents I hadn't counted on and I had to keep pulling it back or my screencast would have been very long! After a few rehearsals, I was ready to record. Or thought I was. First I noticed my voice got funny. Then I found I couldn't see as much of the screen on my Acer netbook as I'd like, so I ditched the browser toolbars (F11) to expand the browser window. Several recording attempts later, I realized I was so nervous I couldn't make the glide pad work right, so I attached a mouse to my Acer. One annoying thing I couldn't fix was my mouse pointer: it kept jumping/flashing/pulsing while I was recording. Happily, it did not come through on the finished product:

I can think of all kinds of uses for screencasting for staff and public: tutorials, procedural docu-casting, reader's advisory tips, "ads" for upcoming programs that could be embedded on the library's Facebook page. It's great that the tools for making screencasts keep getting easier to use, and the price is certainly right.

23 Things, Week 11

Break! Whew! Only not really, since I'm so far behind! ACK!!

23 Things, Week 10, Part Dos

I am experiencing technical difficulties-- if/when I can find a video cam that works with Windows Movie Maker, I'll fill in the rest of this blog entry.
(tempus fugit...)
OK, I'm back. It took me a really long time to get this video together. I'll probably think it was fun in a week or two, but right now I'm feeling lingering frustration. I had this really neat idea that almost did me in because nothing seemed to work right. Initially I thought I'd use my Acer webcam to shoot the video and edit it in Windows Movie Maker. It quickly became apparent I wasn't going to be able to hold the Acer still enough and aim it accurately. So I checked my Sony Power Shot digital camera, and hooray! it had the capability to make movie clips! I made several, then tried to load them to Movie Maker. No dice. Sony is sooooooo proprietary and Movie Maker hated the file format. Scratch Sony. The library owns a Flipcam and I borrowed it. It was very simple to use and has reasonable sound and picture quality. I filmed all my clips, then tried to import those to Movie Maker. Ooops, I didn't have the right codec. Sigh. Tried downloading the magic codec to no avail. Finally had to install the software included on the Flipcam to my laptop to make Movie Maker "see" the files in all their glory. Did some editing and adding of titles and credits, et viola:

23 Things, Week 10, Part Uno

This is one of the funniest library videos I've ever seen, but then I'm a big Mr. Bean fan, right down to owning a yellow Mini. Look! A Card catalog! Books! and White-Out!!

23 Things, Week 9

I have mixed feelings about IM. It can be a very efficient way to keep in touch and a quick and dirty way to conduct business. Or it can reduce conversations to truncated silliness with too many LOLs and OMGs. My chat experience to date is with Facebook, Google Talk, various webcasts, and all those "live help" windows on websites that I order from. I believe IM is most effective if a person takes time to learn a little of the standard texting lingo and then keeps comments concise. I sometimes feel like I'm interrupting people in their work when I knock on their chat door. And when the IM gets fast and furious, the conversation can get a little chopped up and confusing. However, if I become more conversant with the technology, and assume that others will make use of their status indicators, my comfort level should increase.

I set up a Meebo account and imported my Facebook friends as buddies. I've also tried adding a few buddies who have Google accounts, but they keep disappearing from my buddy list for some reason. I have sent several Meebo IMs and am awating replies. I did visit the #23thingsks IRC channel and had a fun short "talk" with wizzyrea et al. IM hasn't changed my life or the way I work yet, but I'll give it some time and see what happens.

23 Things, Week 8

Cloud computing-- how cool is that? As stated in the 23 Things: Cloud Computing blog, we've all been cloud hopping to some extent. Recently I set up web based credit card processing for our family business: updates are automatic and statements and customer information are stored on the service provider's servers. Nothing physically "lives" onsite, so I don't have to worry about server maintenance or security issues (unless the provider gets hacked!). I can access all that information no matter where I am.

For this assignment I chose to work with Google docs because my work email is Google based. I've never created a Google doc, but I have used a form someone else created. I decided to try out presentations-- found the interface straightforward if somewhat stripped down compared to PowerPoint, but it does have the basics. So I created a very short presentation and sent out invites to several people to collaborate on my Google docs presentation about "What I've Learned From 23 Things." That didn't go as smoothly as I'd expected. It seems that Google docs disputed my right to share my presentation with others who were not of the @lawrence.lib.ks.us domain. So I shared with a couple of LPL staff and copied to myself, then forwarded that email to 2 other 23 Things participants. Let's see if I get any nibbles. Back in a few ... (tempus fugit) ... Discovery? I believe that even though my work email @lawrence.lib.ks.us is Google based mail, it is not "pure" Google (i.e., not @gmail.com) and therefore won't let me share docs with outsiders. Or maybe it's a firewall issue. I downloaded my presentation to my desktop, then uploaded to my personal gmail account, and am resharing with the people who couldn't share previously. I was allowed to share directly from Google docs this time. On the plus side, 3 co-workers have collaboratively edited my presentation. Woooohoooo!

23 Things, Week 7

I created a Twitter account (davenportwinery) for my family business about 6 months ago and have used it to post changes in store hours, upcoming events, and availability of our various products to our followers. We are a small "stealth" winery and generally do not use paid advertising, preferring instead to rely on the occasional newspaper/TV piece and word of mouth. Twitter seems to fit this model very well as it allows our customers to choose whether to follow us. We have a link to our Twitter page on our website, and our following has been steadily, if slowly, growing. We tend not to tweet as often as we probably should, but I follow a couple of individuals who tweet about every 20 minutes, and frankly, it wears me out. I hope not to have that effect on others.

I have posted vineyard and winery related pictures on Twitpic and posted them to our Twitter page—very handy and very similar to what I can do on Facebook. I am looking forward to making our tweets display on our Facebook page in the same way that my blog posts do: one go-to spot for everything!

For the 23ThingsKs assignment, I began following qtbooboo (a co-worker), davidleeking (I have continuing interest in all things tech), lybrarian (I like the way she spelled "librarian"), and the 23thingsks group (to help keep me updated on 23ThingsKs). I haven’t really followed long enough to know if their posts are helpful, but they’re certainly entertaining!

Microblogging is an excellent way to deliver small format info quickly, so it’s great for our business. For personal use, since I’m already on Facebook, that will suffice for now.

23 Things, Week 6

I’ve heard about Delicious for some time, just never had the inclination to investigate what it was about. Now that I’ve set up an account (fermentedlibrarian) and played with it a bit, I can see the value of using it, if only for organizing private bookmarks. I sometimes use a different browser (Firefox instead of IE), and it sure will simplify trying to keep my bookmarks synched between the two. It’s also easier to figure out what some of those bookmarks are, since I’m able to include notes about each one. The tagging option provides a myriad of ways to arrange and rearrange lists of bookmarks – something not possible with IE Favorites. Lists that I refer to most often can then be bundled.

The option to send individual bookmarks to others is great, as it the ability to share public bookmarks and bundles. I’m still looking for a way to send a bundle other than emailing the URL—is that possible? And one other thing I want to try out is using a cloud format tag roll on my own website.

23 Things, Week 5

Since I already have a Google account, I decided to use Google Reader for my RSS feeds. I have previously used RSS feeds, back in the “olden days” when they weren’t nearly so easy to set up. Google Reader is very similar in appearance to other Google products and I expected my learning curve wouldn’t be too steep, but I found it a little confusing relating Andy Wibbels’ “How to Use Google Reader” to my experience. That may have been because Wibbels was using the Firefox browser and the Beta version of Google Reader. With a little exploration, I was able to locate everything I needed to subscribe to a few feeds. The feeds I chose: 23 Things Kansas blog (of course!), blogs of 2 other 23 Things participants, local news source Lawrence Journal World, CNN.com, and The Daily Beast. One thing I appreciate about Google Reader is the “Posts per week” guesstimate that displays when I’m considering adding a new subscription. It gives me an idea of my time cost involved in following a feed. Subscribing to and reading more than a very few news feeds can really eat up your day!

23 Things, Week 4

I spent quite a bit of time browsing through images on Flickr. Originally I began searching for library related images, then I strayed a little to other topics (cats, cars, etc.). I wanted to find something library-ish that was edgy or out of the ordinary. I clicked past the Nancy Pearl shushing figurine, the cat-who'd-broken-a-librarian-toy, the librarian tattoos and the erotic librarian bookjacket (sheesh). Still not happy with what I'd found, I added a new search term: zombie librarian. Just the ticket! I found this lovely shot by Matthew Stewart* of a clever makeup/costume job for the 2009 Zombie Walk in Brisbane. Can't imagine how the book stayed in place for any length of time. I believe libraries could attract a whole new audience if this manner of dress became the norm. (Tongue firmly in cheek, folks.) This is the first time I've used Flickr and didn't really know what to expect. It was fun to see how many oddball images there are. I'll definitely be a return visitor.
*See more of his work at http://www.flickr.com/photos/aramisfirefly/

Rock technology, not chairs

71 year old wins $10,000 iTunes gift card-- this is a very sweet piece.

EW talks to the Georgia grandfather who bought the 10 billionth song on itunes: 'I've never won anything!'

23 Things, Week 3

So, I'm finally tackling Week Three: Online Meetings. I have attended various online offerings in the past, some really great, some not so much. (The not so much ones turned out to be sales pitches disguised as learning opportunities, but even those sessions had a few nuggets of useful info among the chaff.) I think some of the best ones I've attended have been online sessions that were offered to our staff here as a group: we all watched the presentation, participated using microphone or live chat, and -- here's the best part -- after the presentation, we remained in the group and discussed how the presentation might inform what we're doing here at LPL. It allows the online socialization to bleed over into the face to face staff world. Online meetings also allow staff access to resources they would be unable to tap if they had to take time off and travel to some removed geographic destination. Win-win, yes?

The archived meeting I attended was OPAL's "Marketing Your Library on the Web" with Jill Bickford and Marcella Whitelam. I found it very informative, especially the stats re: the numbers of 50+ adults who are now making inroads on Facebook. This is counter to what I think many believe about boomers/seniors, that they don't like technology. Considering that age group may have more disposible income and pay more taxes than teens, it's definitely an audience libraries should be targeting for programming.

I was also intrigued by the Pew stats showing the average social network user is "socializing" 5 days per week/4 hours per day-- an indication that creating a library presence on the same networks would let us meet them where they live.

It's difficult to say how online meeting technology will look in 10 years, but I do believe it will be more pervasive than it is today. Economics, logistical considerations, and The Pace of Life will shape the format and delivery methods. Consider this: Oprah, one of the wealthiest people in the universe, no longer needs to fly people in to be on her show. She uses Skype all the time now. It's priced right (free-- economics), it works (logistical considerations), and it's easy to use (Pace of Life).